Since he films all of his movies in and around my beloved home town of Philadelphia, I've always had a real soft spot for M. Night Shyamalan. I still believe that The Sixth Sense is a damn good film, that Unbreakable is a still-unheralded masterpiece, and that Signs is a pretty slick "reality-based" sci-fi thriller. But after suffering through The Village and Lady in the Water, I'm beginning to wish the guy would move on to Baltimore, Boston or another east coast city. (Nah, not really. It's pretty cool to have a "local filmmaker" of Shyamalan's talent and influence.)

But a few weeks back M. Night "won" a pair of Razzies for worst director and worst supporting actor, one of which I don't think he really deserved ... but that supporting actor slap, yeah, I can get behind that one. Apparently the self-admiring movie-maker didn't even hear about his Lady in the Water Razzies (yeah, right) and it took a reporter from New York Magazine to spill those beans. And Nighty got just a little bit defensive: "Look, I loved that movie. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie. So there's some disconnect from the intention to the perception of it. I hope, just with time, that will ease. All of my movies have benefited from time."

OK, so maybe in 62 years Lady in the Water will be the new Casablanca ... but I really freaking doubt it. It's a ponderous, indulgent and (bottom line) silly movie that the critics disliked and the audiences pretty much ignored. But hey, one or two failures in a row can often lead to a big-time comeback project that everyone rallies behind and adores. For the record, Shyamalan is presently working on adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender and (yes) He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ... so I wouldn't exactly hold my breath waiting for that big comeback love-fest.

[via Hollywood Wiretap]

Over at Latino Review, they've posted a review of the much-circulated -- and much rejected -- script by The Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan called The Green Effect. Sadly, the script recently went around Hollywood and nobody was interested -- which is something the author of the review just can't understand. At the site, the reviewer goes on and on about how fantastic the script is and how Night is getting the shaft in Hollywood after only one "flop" -- the less-than-stellar Lady in the Water.

In the piece, the reviewer also goes on to say that any studio executive who passed on the project should be fired because, among other things, Shyamalan's films have made billions and this script has a chance of doing the same. I kinda agree -- at least about the shafting part. It's a story probably as old as Hollywood itself. A writer/director has a huge success the first time he gets a chance and then spends the rest of his career trying to live up to that success. Shyamalan is a talented writer/director and I hope he won't follow in the footsteps of another very successful first-timer who never really "recovered" from his initial success -- the genius Orson Welles.

Welles was never really the same after Citizen Kane and spent the rest of his career trying to live up to it. Shyamalan, at least, has already had a few successful films under his belt. Heck, even Spielberg made one or two not-so-good movies -- just watch 1941 if you don't believe me. So, in spite of his recent downturn, I think Shyamalan has the talent and skills to bounce back. What do you guys think?

A loud splash disturbs the outdoor pool one night at The Cove, a drab, built-for-economy apartment complex somewhere in low-rent Philadelphia. The apartment's stuttering super, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) bounds out of his poolside bungalow, flashlight at the ready, thinking he's just caught one of the tenants in an unauthorized, off-hours cannonball. He's actually interrupted Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a skinny dipper from the stars who has arrived in our world to complete a task so profound that she can't even articulate it. She can't articulate anything, in fact. Her role in the film will be to wander around aimlessly, speaking in a throaty hush and preferring to remain naked save for a man's button-up shirt that drops past her knees. Sometimes she gives off a seductive gaze and bares her long legs, while other times she wilts, as if her batteries are being drained by malevolent outside forces. She's like a cross between Annette Bening and E.T.

We eventually learn that she is a sea nymph from The Blue World, which sounds like a place you'd see on HBO's Real Sex, and she's come to deliver prognostications about the future of America. She can look someone in the eye and tell them exactly what happens in their future, and does so more than once, without even the courtesy of a spoiler warning. Why she crash landed at The Cove is a long story, matched in complexity only by the one about how she plans to return to her home planet. Her situation is so complicated that you wonder why she bothered making the trip; among other things, she must elude a wolfish predator with grass for fur, decipher complex symbology that will identify her Guardian and her Guild, and summon a giant eagle that can be ridden out of town like a flying carpet. Is this film derived from a bedtime story or the liner notes to a Led Zeppelin album?

Lady in the Water has its origins in a bedtime story director M. Night Shyamalan made up for this kids. If this the kind of bedtime story he tells, I bet his kids have some freaky dreams. I also bet those dreams are a heck of a lot more intriguing than the film their dad made from the tale he wove for them.

Paul Giamatti (who could read the LA phone book for 90 minutes on-screen and make it look good) plays the unfortunately named Cleveland Heep, a man who is trying to quietly hide away from life as the stuttering superintendent of The Cove, an average apartment building. As the film opens, Cleveland is welcoming a new tenant, literature and film critic Harry Farber (Bob Balaban). Now, logic might tell you that the bit you're going to open the film with should have some relevance to the actual plot and outcome of the tale, but in this case, the inclusion of this character is little more than a gratuitous bitchslap to the critics who have panned Shyamalan's last few films. Practically every word Balaban is forced to utter is a cliche of the snooty film critic (not that there aren't snooty film critics who are like that, it's just that in this case, the character is non-essential to the storyline other than ultimately serving as the obligatory redshirt). And I don't think it's that all those critics have no sense of self-deprecating humor; this character is just so shallowly drawn and blatantly placed that it reflects more on Shyamalan's self-indulgence than on the critics he's panning.